Art Speaks Textile Center Library Series: July, 2014: Art vs. Craft

Posted July 15, 2014

Art Speaks Series: July, 2014

Art vs. Craft is there something to argue about?

It is hard to determine where
the line is that separates art or craft.

"Over the last five to ten years,
museum curators, gallerists, art historians, are all beginning to realize that
there is a very, very fine line between the craft medium, and fine arts--to the
point where many, many times, it just totally disappears."--Artist
Leslie Pontz, when exhibiting in Textile Center's Joan Mondale Gallery March
2014

Do you need to have a
technical grounding in the making of the work, whatever material you are using,
and then do you become an artist?

Are you born an artist and
create your work spontaneously without formal training? Are you only considered
an artist when you gain a following and exhibit your art for others to comment
on and then pronounce you an artist? Or, do you need to sell your art and
become known and sought after by others?

Did Grandma Moses consider
herself and artist before she became well known, or after she was discovered?
And if she had never been discovered would her work be considered art? This is
true of the Gees Bend quilters. They quilted for necessity and community. Now
that they have been discovered by an authority, their quilts are being sold for
high prices. They have become artists. The most common things people agree
about are that an artist finds inspiration, training, economics, and philosophy
to be important assets to being known as an artist.

But, consider the lowly
spider. She comes from a line of spinners; it is in her genetic make-up; so she
spins constantly. She spins in hidden places; but one day a human strolls
through nature at dawn when the sun is rising and there is dew on the ground
and on the spider’s web, and that human is dazzled by the beauty of the spider's
work, so intricate and finely crafted, now exhibited in the open for all to
see. Is that craft or art?

Others maintain that craft has
lost its meaning because technology is doing the process work. However art
maintains its status because there are institutions and structures in place to
continue the meaning of art.

Textile Center Pat O’Connor
Library has several books devoted to this subject. The Bauhaus began before
World War I and was terminated by the Nazis in 1933. Many of the Bauhaus
survivors came to America and started their own Bauhaus schools. And by the
1960, 70 and 80s a new craft movement began to show that art was better than
the rush by consumers to buy cheap goods They started schools of their own,
such as Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. More recent publications stated
21st century craft is losing its meaning altogether because of technology. Come
in and decide for yourself.